Audio version of this story on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms5Co49dH-I&t=165s
Hey folks, I’m your host Jimmy and welcome to Spooky Appalachia! For this week I know it’s been a while since I’ve covered a story that I’ve written and researched, I’ve had so many awesome stories sent in by you all that I wanted to get out the door as fast as I could with the weekly releases.
For this week’s story I decided to do one I’ve been wanting to do for a good while and that is the story of The Grafton Monster. The town of Grafton is in the northern part of the state of West Virginia, about 35 minutes from Morgantown. Grafton was first settled in 1852 by construction crews of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It was chartered in 1856 and during the Civil War it was a key rail center that was occupied by both Confederate and Union troops. Grafton is also the home of the International Mother’s Day Shrine, the holiday got its startings in Grafton. Also it’s the home to both of West Virginia’s national cemeteries.
Our story takes place on June 16th, 1964, when a young reporter named Robert Cockrell was driving home from work somewhere around 11:00 PM. He was the only car on the road of Riverside Drive since most folks in town were in bed at this hour. As he was driving through a curve he noticed something extremely odd and out of place, a huge white mass was standing between the road and a river bank. While he drove past it, the thing never moved, but Robert could tell it was alive. He described it as being around 9 feet tall and 4 feet wide, white or gray in color, and its skin was seal-like. The oddest thing about it was it had no head!
Startled by this, Robert floored it home and after calming down he returned with two of his friends to investigate about an hour later. When they got there the creature was gone without a trace other than a giant impression left in the grass where it was standing. It was like the creature was lifted up out of the spot it stood. The three also noticed an odd low whistling noise coming from the river, but they could not find out exactly where it was coming from.
After running the story in the paper, monster hunting fever took over the town. More than 100 people began covering the area at night hoping to get a glimpse of the creature. More than 20 people reported seeing it, before the newspaper ran a story claiming that the creature was just someone pushing carts and was just misidentified and a wildly imaginative story.
After this the story became all but forgotten, until 1995 when researcher Mark Hall found the story in an unpublished article in the Gary Barker archive. The Grafton Monster also owes some of its fame due to it being featured as a cryptid in the popular game Fallout 76.
Source(s) Monsters of West Virginia by Ellen Guiley
AppalachianOddity.org
Remember if you’ve had a paranormal encounter you’d like to see get featured here you can send it to us using our google form. There’s a link to it in the description as well as our link tree. https://forms.gle/WBSBgRkna5RJLXAo6
You can also email us at spookyappalachia@gmail.com
